Joost Vander Auwera, PhD in Art History (Ghent University) and MBA (Vlerick Louvain Ghent School of Management), devoted some 80 publications to 17th century Flemish painting and to the business administration of cultural institutions. Apart from having been a teaching assistant to the late Prof. Dr. Roger – A. d’Hulst and Prof. Dr. Claire Van Damme and Professor in Museology and Cultural Management at Ghent University, as well as Guest Professor in Connoisseurship at the Brussels VUB University, he was senior curator at the Old Masters Department of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels for thirty years (1992-2022), and was involved with leading positions in international and multidisciplinary projects on non-invasive dendrochronology and of panel paintings as Co-Founder and Project Leader of the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project 2016–22 with a team of 15 scholars from 9 nationalities – see the website www.jordaensvandyck.org.
Together with Dr. Sabine van Sprang he curated the exhibition in the Brussels museum on Rubens. A Genius at Work (2007-2008) and with Dr. Irene Schaudies and Dr. Justus Lange on Jordaens and the Antique (Brussels & Kassel, 2012-2013). His dissertation (2003) on Abraham Janssen van Nuyssen (Liège (?) 1571/75-Antwerp 1632) stimulated his interest and research into the understudied domain of Flemish Caravaggism. He was a member of the Organizing and Scientific Committees of the International Conference on Flemish Caravaggism –Painters from the Spanish Netherlands and the Principality of Liège. A Status Quaestionis at the Academia Belgica in Rome, organised by its Director Dr. Sabine Van Sprang on 12-13 December 2023 and delivered two lectures: Flemish Caravaggism: where do we stand and why is this colloquium so much needed? & Abraham Janssen and Caravaggism. Most recently he wrote the chapter on ‘The sketch in the footsteps of Rubens and in the eye of the contemporary’ in the catalogue of the exhibition Drafts: From Rubens to Khnopff, (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 10.10.2024 – 16.02.2025).